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Report Helps Flesh Out Portrait of Elder Abuse and Its Victims

September 16th, 2005

While abuse of the elderly is a growing problem, comparatively little is known about the circumstances, victims and perpetrators of such crimes. The Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority has published in its August 2005 Research Bulletin findings based on state and federal data that fill in some of the details.

According to the report, the typical victim of elder abuse '“ in both Illinois and nationally -- is a white female 80 years of age or older. Family members are most likely to perpetrate the abuse, and females are as likely as males to be the abusers.

The study found that the most common form of abuse in Illinois was financial exploitation (34 percent), followed by emotional abuse (28 percent), passive neglect (22 percent), and physical abuse (10 percent).

In Illinois, the highest percentage of elder abuse victims lived in their own home or apartment (80 percent), were white (75 percent), female (70 percent '“ the figure is 56 percent nationally), widowed (48 percent), physically impaired (41 percent), and between the ages of 76 and 85 (39 percent), with a mean age of 79 years. Sixty percent of Illinois elder abuse victims did not have any special legal status, such as being under a guardianship or conservatorship.

As for the alleged elder abusers in Illinois, most were white (72 percent), were not likely to be a caregiver of the elderly victim (49 percent), were children of the victim (42 percent) and financially dependent on the victim (22 percent). Also, the majority of alleged abusers (80 percent) did not hold any special legal status, such as power of attorney, over the victim.

Between 1993 and 2003, the number of reported cases of elder abuse in Illinois shot up 85 percent, from 4,142 to 7,672. (During the same period, robbery fell 50 percent and hate crimes dropped 43 percent.) Nevertheless, "Laws governing elder abuse reporting combined with a variety of unique barriers senior citizens often face may camouflage the actual number of elder abuse cases that occur in Illinois," the report states.

Felinton Elder Law & Estate Planning Centers

Mindy Felinton concentrates in the areas of Medicaid planning, Veterans' Benefits, asset protection, nursing home planning, elder law, wills, estate planning, trusts, living wills, powers of attorney, probate administration and trust administration and began her legal career 30 years ago as an Assistant State Attorney...

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Hale Ball Carlson Baumgartner Murphy PLC

Jean Galloway Ball is certified in Elder Law by the National Elder Law Foundation. She is a 1977 honors graduate of the National Law Center, George Washington University, and she did her undergraduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1971.
She is admitted to practice in Vir...

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The Law Firm of Evan H. Farr, P.C.

In practice since 1987, Fairfax Attorney Evan Farr is widely recognized as one of the leading Elder Law, Estate Planning, and Specials Needs attorneys in Virginia and one of foremost experts in the Country in the field of Medicaid Asset Protection and related Trusts. Evan Farr has been quoted or cited as an expert by n...

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